Guess what arrived today?
My personal training study materials (and Sadie’s paw, apparently).
My NASM textbook, also known as the most expensive textbook in all the land, arrived as I was working late this morning. You know a book is expensive when you have to sign for it. Fancy!
Or maybe the whole “signature required” think was to ensure that this little gem made it to me safely:
What 27-year-old female doesn’t want a brand new backpack? I can never say no to a little more mesh in my life.
It shall never leave my side. 
The textbook came with a Quick-Start Guide to get me moving. I have 180 days to prepare for the exam.
I plan to take some time today to page through the textbook and formulate a game plan. I’ve always been fairly decent at motivating myself to study but I need to create a plan of attack first to prevent me from feeling lost. (If you’ve gone through the NASM personal trainer certification process, any advice you may have on how to approach studying for the exam would be greatly appreciated!)
Let the games begin!
Lunch
Today’s lunch started with a small bowl of sweet potato chips that I snacked on while I prepared the rest of my meal.
On the stovetop, I sautéed a quarter of a sliced onion, chopped Portobello mushrooms and yellow squash in olive oil before adding steamed broccoli and chicken sausage to the mix.
After topping the bowl with a sprinkling of mozzarella cheese and stirring everything together, lunch was ready!
Time to continue plugging away on an article!
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-1e3-7hOJ_U8Bg.gif\")
Good luck! You are such an inspiration to me…I hope {once I reach my goal weight} to start the journey of becoming a personal trainer. I look forward to hearing about your experience!
thanks so much, sam! and good luck with your goals!
What an exciting experience! I think it would be a lot of fun to help others stay in shape and be healthy. I’m curious, how much is the textbook? 🙂
Good luck! I think you will be ok as long as you do a little each night. Don’t procrastinate!
Awesome! I can’t wait to read all about your adventure with personal training as I hope to become one as well some day!
Check out my latest recipe @ bakingblissful.blogspot.com
Hi Julie. I recently started reading your blog and I wanted to comment because I got my NASM certification back in January. I studied while in school, (just finished my sophomore year in college) and I am by NO means a science person—English major !
Anyways, I would highly recommend that you really focus a lot of your attention on muscle imbalances, i.e. when performing the squat test. You know, if the knees go inward, which muscles are over/underactive and what stretches/exercises can be performed to improve the movement. This really helped me with questions I didn’t necessarily know the exact answer to, but I could figure it out from my knowledge of physiology.
I hope my two cents helps. Best of luck!
perfect!! thanks so much for the feedback. i really appreciate it!
I just want to tell you I love getting your posts in my email. Your site is awesome and there is so many interesting things that you post… and I love Sadie… she is one spoiled lovin’ pup (and pretty damn cute!)
Good luck on you training.
Tere
thanks so much, tere! 🙂
I think I only studied for the NASM test for 3-4 weeks. Know the muscles and how they attach and work together.
What a schnazzy backpack – don’t lie Julie – you know that bad boy will be poppin up on a fashion post one of these days 😉
I am thrilled that you are getting certified. Un-certified you put together some amazing workouts and I can only imagine that they will be even better once you’ve learned all about the muscle groups, recovery, etc. I would love to get certified – never teach a class in my life but use the info for my own workouts and training. The body is fascinating (a fact I truely came to appreciate while going through both of my pregnancies)
If you’re anything like me, chapters 1-3 will make you want to cry out of boredom. You’ll want to learn all of the isolated functions of the muscles in chapter 4, definitely pay attention to the chart at the end of chapter 6, and make lots of flash cards!
Good luck Julie!!!! You’ll do amazing!!!
You’ll do great Julie! I just passed my exam on Friday and spent a total of about 5 weeks studying. It just takes dedication, I had to approach it like I use to approach 6 week accelerated college courses. Also helped that my boyfriend was studying for it at the same time, so we spent a lot of time drilling each other. Definitely make flash cards!
Good luck!
Hi Julie! I got my NASM certification about 2 years ago, and the test is really nothing to stress over. As someone mentioned earlier, make sure you REALLY get to know your muscle imbalances and the exercises/stretches to perform to correct them. There’s a chart for them in the book, memorize it!! There was a ton of questions on that. Don’t worry too much about the biology and anatomy chapters. You really just need to have a basic understanding on how everything works. The majority of the questions on the test are about the fitness assessments,finding and correcting muscle imbalances and program design. The practice test they have online is EXACTLY like the actual test. Once you feel comfortable with that, you’ll be fine for the real test! Good luck and feel free to email me if you have any questions!
thanks so much for this comment, suzanne! just wrote all of this down as a guideline!